The old man and the lake
by TheWhispersWhichFlowGrey
Summary: Just a short oneshot about two teens watching an old man watch a lake... Nothing much, but worth giving a shot. Rated T because I'm very paranoid and I just like to rate my stories T.


**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Merlin, and sometimes I think it's better that way. God knows where we'd be if I owned it:) I only own the story and my little OC's. **

**Okay, so this has been bugging me for such a long time, I felt I'd go crazy if I didn't write it. So here it is, hope it will leave me off the hook now. **

**It's nothing much, this story has the character of a drabble, but nonetheless I hope you'll enjoy it. **

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Joseph almost hated days like this. The day right before school started. He didn't know why the "almost" was there, not entirely. To be honest, there were moments throughout the day when he hated it with all of his heart. But there was just something about the last day of summer… Especially towards the end. A sort of quiet, a sort of resignation, maybe even peace. There was a moment just as the sun would set when he'd come to terms with the long days of warm sun and wind blowing in his hair as he rode the bike being over.

Of course, Joseph's best friend, Ralph, thought he was mad.

The boy hurried up the stairs to his room and quickly rummaged through his wardrobe, desperately scanning its contents in the gloom of the nearly-set sun for his jacket.

Joseph stopped to breathe and ran a hand through his brown hair, managing to make it look even more ruffled. His hair had always been like that: unruly and messy, stubbornly sticking in every direction possible and impossible, seemingly only for the kicks. He had given up on trying to tame it long ago.

It had to be there, Joseph frantically told himself. They would miss the sunset and he'd promised Sarah to take her. Why was it that the only time he really needed it, the damn jacket was nowhere to be found?

The boy slammed the wardrobe doors shut, annoyed, and started towards the hallway. Jacket be damned, he could stand a couple of minutes of cold. And if not, then-oh well. It wasn't like staying home and playing video games while your aunt fusses over you, stuffing you with soup and chocolates and sweets, was all that bad.

Just as he was abut to close the door, he noticed a midnight blue sleeve hanging off the bed from somewhere beneath his pillow. The boy sighed and stormed back inside, grabbing the jacket and carelessly pulling it on while trotting down the stairs two at a time. He really needed to clean his bedroom.

He emerged into the hall and entered the kitchen, where Sarah was chatting idly to his aunt over a cup of tea. Joseph resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He would never understand how that woman always managed to produce hot tea out of thin air.

"Hey, I'm ready" he said as way of announcing his presence, and both women turned their gazes on him. "Come on, we're gonna miss the sunset."

Sarah turned to his aunt with an apologetic smile, her soft orange curls bouncing around her face. "Thank you for the tea Mrs. White. It was lovely talking to you"

"And you too dear" his aunt drawled as Joseph took Sarah's hand and raced out the front door.

He laughed as he his aunt's "And if you're late for dinner again,_ Joseph_!" following them down the street. Sarah giggled, excitement bubbling up in her chest for unknown reasons.

There was a couple of minutes' run from where they were to the lake, and Joseph stopped on the other side of the street.

They slumped down on the grass, panting, just as a truck sped up on the narrow lane, blocking the image of the lake for a second.

"She's nice, your aunt" she teased him with a small smirk, and Joseph stubbornly kept his gaze on the lake, trying not to blush. He mumbled something incoherently under his beard, and Sarah laughed.

A companionable silence settle between them as they watched the sun lower into the water.

It was already halfway down, melting red light onto the cold waves of the relatively small lake. The clouds were mere shadows powdered with pink on a sky that faded from bright red, to orange, to pink, to violet and then to finally a dark, velvety blue. The ghosts of the first stars were beginning to take shape up on the slowly growing dark patch.

Joseph heard Sarah draw in a breath.

"I gotta hand it to you: you were right. It is beautiful"

Joseph turned and locked his brown eyes onto her dark green ones. Her hair was slowly blowing in the breeze and the sun was shining its last rays into her eyes, the left side of her face glowing a soft red.

"Not like that time with the coffee shop" her smile was replaced by a feigned serious expression, and Joseph had to look away as he burst into laughter.

"You're never going to let me live that down, are you?"

Sarah smirked. "Never"

They turned back their gazes toward the now almost dark scenery, in time to see an old man dressed in a simple black coat stop and lean on the railing on the other side of the street, his back to them, watching the sunset.

Joseph could see the lone isle with the broken ruins of the old tower (their little town's most famous tourist attraction) rising from the silent waves just above the man's head.

The sun was nearly done sinking into the cold depths of the lake by now, so it was almost too dark to make out the details, but enough to recognize the white of the old man's long hair.

"Do you know him?" asked Sarah, she too watching the old man.

Joseph started shaking his head. Sarah had only just moved there, and he had been her guide for the past week, since she'd met her at a neighbor's party/boring dinner thing.

The boy stopped abruptly, something tickling the edges of his memory.

"Wait." He said. "No, I know him"

Sarah looked at him questioningly, and Joseph tried to remember all that his aunt had said at the beginning of the summer.

"He just moved here, like you. This June. Uh, what was his name? I remember my aunt saying something to one of my neighbors-Mary, the, um, _blonde_ one?"

Sarah looked clueless for a moment, before a grin of recognition crawled onto her face, and she punched him lightly in the arm.

"Joseph!"

He just smiled a goofy smile at her. "Anyway, I can't remember his name. He moved two houses from me."

Joseph turned back to look at the old man's back.

"It's just-there's something a bit weird about him. My aunt tried to talk to him right away-you know, welcome him into the community and all that. I went with her, but he didn't say much. He smiled at us and all that, but he just seems a bit… I don't know. Aloof?"

"Maybe he's just shy?"

Joseph shook his head. He could barely see the isle now, much less the old man. He was just a little more than another shadow now.

"He kept to himself since then. I sometimes see him walking around the village, but mostly he seems to spend his time in the house"

Sarah nodded. "Well, then maybe he just doesn't like people? I mean, look at him, he's probably seventy-eighty, I don't know."

Her tone changed and Joseph could see something twinkle in her eyes. If the boy had learned anything in the week that he'd known her, that was that Sarah loved stories. He could see where this was going and felt his lips twitch involuntarily.

They'd done this before: stayed at a café and watched people go by, making up stories about who they were, what they'd done, where they'd been. He wasn't that good at it, but Sarah came up with all these crazy ideas. She'd start waving her hands around frantically, enthusiasm making her cheeks flush red and her eyes sparkle. Joseph himself had just sat there and nodded all throughout the speech, only adding small comments here and there.

"Oh, I know!" she jumped, turning to him. "Maybe this is where he first met the love of his life! And this is where he proposed to her!"

Joseph seemed to ponder the idea for a minute. "My aunt heard he traveled all around the world. Mrs. Glaymond from downtown told her, so it's not necessarily true-she loves gossip and all that-"

Sarah cut him enthusiastically, putting a hand on his shoulder and turning him to face her.

"Oh, but this is perfect, don't you see? He met her here, proposed here, and then they started traveling and all that. And now she died and he came back." Sarah's enthusiasm turned into a sad smile.

"He comes here every day at dusk and remembers that first day together, those afternoons strolling through the park…"

She trailed off and he looked back at the figure of the old man, now just a slightly darker shadow.

"Maybe"

After a couple of minutes, he realized he'd seen him there before. "I've seen him come here a couple of times, you know? He seems terribly fond of this lake."

Joseph turned to look at Sarah. "So who knows? Maybe you're right"

The girl beamed at the prospect.

"Or maybe this is where he and his best friend used to come when they were little" she started again, the idea already forming. "They played all of their childhood and went together to war or something." Her expression turned grim. "He probably died. Oh, God, why do all my ideas end up like that?"

Joseph laughed at her pouting face and stood up, offering her his hand. She took it.

"Probably because the guy's really old. Coming here alone doesn't exactly help his case"

They walked to the street together and started towards Sarah's house.

"You're gonna be a brilliant writer one day" he told her, and she blushed, even if he couldn't see it.

"You think?"

Joseph grinned.

"Yeah. All the old women will cry their eyes out when you kill all of your characters"

Sarah promptly punched him in the arm and they started laughing, not even noticing the old man as he watched them disappearing into the night, arm in arm.

Sighing, he too raised his hands from the railing and gave the barely discernible isle one more look before he started walking off, too.

He closed his eyes as he walked, hearing the distant beating of wings as the memory of damp grass and cold chain mail, the smell of the chilly morning, filled his senses. The bright morning sun, the heavy, limp body in his arms. Lids slowly closing over blue irises...

Suddenly he opened his eyes and the memory was gone. He walked on, not looking back.

Joseph had no idea just how much he didn't know about the one thousand and a half year old man he'd just passed by, his thoughts not even going near him as he pulled Sarah into a kiss.

Sarah too forgot all about the old man and the long story of his life nobody really knew.

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**That was it... Thank you very much:) Tell me what you think? **


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